Quick-Fire News

Oh, hey, uhhhh…. not dead. *waves* Hello. Sorry. I vanished off the face of the earth.

Turns out: working in a bookshop is super tiring! Especially when you’re working full time for the two weeks before Christmas, AND ALSO writing a novel with whatever leftover brainpower you can scrape together! I mean, I don’t think that’s COMPLETELY to blame for my total absence from blogging since mid-November, but it’s definitely part of it.

I guess I’ve also just shifted over to posting more of my short-term news on Twitter and Tumblr, and don’t feel the need to spin it out into whole blog posts. Blog posts are for when I have Things To Say, and I haven’t really had many things to say that I haven’t already said, so. *shrug* Not a lot of blogging happened.

But a few things happened since I was last here, so here’s some quick-fire news:

I won my tenth NaNoWriMo with 80,252 words. (I hit 50k on Day 17 this year, then forced myself to keep going.)

I did not, however, manage to finish To Run With The Hound in the month of November as I planned. I finished it on 23rd December, instead, with a total of 112,926 words (if you include the explanatory notes). That makes it my… fourth longest book, if I’m keeping track correctly. Beneath The Branches is still winning, Bard comes in second, closely followed by A Single Soul. So, two of those books aren’t terrible.

I’m still waiting on feedback from The Muddle Ages. A couple of them said they’d started it, but so far no one has yelled at me. I’m vaguely disappointed.

I now own five different versions of Táin Bó Cúailnge and also have a picture of Cú Chulainn on my wall. I am a parody of myself. I regret nothing.

Waterstones said they’d keep me as weekend staff for January; after that we’ll figure out where things go. So I’m not unemployed for another month (YAY) and I’ve proven myself to be Not Terrible at bookselling! Excellent!

I finally obtained a new battery for my video camera and am planning to return to making videos in the not-too-distant future.

BUT I’m having oral surgery next week to remove all four of my wisdom teeth, under general anaesthetic, so that’s gonna keep me out of action for at least a couple of days. Not looking forward to that at all. Please don’t let me blog while under the influence, it’ll get messy.

We finished redecorating my room(s) and I have MANY bookshelves and it is GREAT. There’s still a lot of stuff to sort through — old paperwork, boxes of junk — as it all got shoved in the cupboard ahead of the Christmas period, so I’m going to spend my month of less-employment to work on that.

Aaaand… that feels like everything significant. Is there anything else? I don’t think there’s anything else.

Planning also to spend January catching up on books, and in the process resurrecting my book blog. Hopefully in this increased period of blogging I will also blog here more often, but who knows. We’ll have to wait and see.

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6 thoughts on “Quick-Fire News”

Best of luck with everything–including the oral surgery. Ya know, ice and rest and all that–and no, no blogging under the influence, unless it’s really funny, they maybe! Jealous of all your bookshelves in your room–sounds delightful.

ohhhhh no to the teeth surgery. 😭 good luck though afshogsh that sounds super painful. I hope there are no complications though! And I’m glad you got to keep your job a bit longer! I mean you’re selling copies of ATPN so hey I’m a huge supportive fan here. 😌

Heh, only two copies so far but that is actually not bad given that we don’t sell a lot of YA in our shop. (And people seem to want happy books for Christmas. Wild, I know.) Let’s see if I can sell the third copy before I leave.

Good luck with the wisdom teeth, Finn! If it helps – I was SO nervous about mine (to the point where I waited way too long to get them out, which made the surgery more difficult) and it still wasn’t nearly as bad as I made it out to be. If you stay on top of the pain medication you shouldn’t feel much of anything. My Netflix account claims apparently I watched half a season of Grey’s Anatomy but I have absolutely no recollection of it, haha, those pain meds really are something. Maybe you can catch up on your TBR :)

And that’s so cool about the bookshop! I actually worked seasonally at one too this year, and it really is exhausting. Plus, you learn about so many new books to read and my TBR honestly cannot keep up. :D